New York in Fall, Camel Hair, Ryan Adams and Po.
Elizabeth Street in the Fall.
New York in the Fall
You just have to run through some leaves on the Saw Mill Parkway then down the West Side. Or after class you roll through the carnival streets of the South Bronx – blasting with alarmingly loud music and syncopated walking. Then over one of those tiny bridges to the East side. Maybe you don’t drive and take Metro North instead. Putnam and Westchester are all leaves and the future rich kids of the Upper East Side or Ridgefield Ct. You are rocked into the most pleasant train nap until you arrive in Grand Central. It is New York in autumn. Your friend’s dad has a building in mid-town. You mention your friend’s name and get free parking two blocks away from Times Square. His father never gave permission really – and he’s going to be angry when he finds out.
The summer food (more accurately: grub) is thankfully gone. No more hot dogs or barbeque. Now you make reservations at Mark Joseph steakhouse on Water Street. Or you can do better – maybe Po on Cornelia Street. Stop blowing your money on Coronas – and get some Stella or Irish beer. Wine too – no more Rosé - McLaren Vale Shiraz. It is time to trade in the seersucker and – especially after Sept 31 – find the camel hair jacket.
The sense of normality returns. The tourists are no longer high school science teachers from the mid-west. The young, promiscuous interns are gone. Corn fed blondes at the bottom rung of publishing/fashion/television need not apply. A real man wants to sow his seed or at least his fantasies with a real New York girl. And if it goes poorly, the sophomores are lurking around 14th street with their fake Maryland driver’s licenses – which they bought for fifty dollars. They’ll be here until finals.
Afternoon: Walking through Rockefeller center the faintest hint of perspiration on the back of your neck enlivens you. In July it made you feel heavy and long for a movie theatre. In the last weeks of September sweat actually cools you down. You roll into your friend’s apartment, plan out your poker adventure for the night while a 90 inch projection screen mounted on a 91 and ½ inch wall brings you the middle of “Lost in Translation.” Until it is inevitably changed to a Pimp My Ride rerun.
You think about how lovely it would be to move into Williamsburg or some other gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn that was trendy the day before yesterday. You laugh at the idea that the South Bronx is being called “SoBro” by some overly-ambitious real-estate mongers. SoBro is chic if you think dead Puerto Ricans are “authentic”. But who cares? The air is crisp in Manhattan and the absurd improv shows at Upright Citizen’s Brigade are free or close to it.
You walk past St. Agnes – the commuter’s Catholic Church – where the traditional devotions of the parishioners are a stark contrast to the mural of St. Agnes behind the altar. St. Agnes is the most immodestly dressed woman at Mass everyday.
Evening – You emerge from the soon to be forever closed downtown club and, in a city of 8 million, bump into your only serious ex-girlfriend. You share coffee with cream (without nostalgia or memories.) She has taken a set that deep down you love her.
Or you go to the Ryan Adams show alone – all your friends bailed out. (Can’t afford to get in from Long Island, don’t think I’d like alt-country – it’s my mom’s birthday). Between cursing your friends and waiting for his on stage tantrum you realize this is the best music you’ve heard live in years. You still want female companionship and the door to the lobby opens during the show – casting a yellow box of light down the aisle to your left. The music swirls, lifts your heart out of your chest. Your senses filled with the touch of velvet, the smell of a young woman’s hair. Eyes close slowly and open. The breakdown in Bartering Lines comes and you think. If in that frame of light appeared her silhouette…
Play poker illegally with other college gamblers in mid-town – the Yankees are making a run for the playoffs on the one television and your brand new tie looks great. The way it clashes with your surf shirt looks even better. You lose 100 bucks after entry fee and a re-buy. The refrigerator at this “club” only has one bottle of Tropicana fruit punch. But one of the winners is buying pizza and the guy with the funny shirt is demanding over his cell phone that his girlfriend deliver all the boys some beer. Your friend’s ex-roommate will win over 1,000 dollars in cash games.
Your friend drags you all over downtown and finds the girl he’s illicitly longing for. She is hanging below 14th street – and ironically she is a sophomore without a fake Maryland driver’s license. You are the happy third wheel. You can report back to all his friends that she is real, and her red shoes, cheekbones, raggedly unstudied posture and taste in diner fare justifies his New York devotion. She’s all Union Square style and the two of you are all upstate blushes and slippery deferences. You didn’t dress for the evening and so when you find yourself stopped on Irving and 6th – talking, you lean forward on your toes and back on your heels and dig your hands deep into your pockets until you sigh and resign yourself to those gloriously cold fall arms.
Gin, gin and gin at the bar on Avenue A. You dance to the latest rap songs with your friends and all the girls are wearing their “going out shirt with their going out jeans.” And the guys are wearing their “going out striped shirt, with their going out stove-pipe jeans on their going out arrogance.” And the one girl in an elegant black dress asks you if you just got out of work. To be audible her lips are literally pressed against your ear-lobe. Gin and gin and more gin. Your arms are warm. A girl brags about her fake Maryland license to you and asks you for a drink. You can’t even tell if she’s out of high school and decline – or rather you introduce her to your friend whose muse has left him for tonight – and you’ll discover next February – perhaps forever.
Dénouement: The walk back to the car is all laughs and un-sighed sighs. Gin and alt country troubadoring, the longing for your current girlfriend (upstate on her girls night out,) the lights outside of St. Patrick’s. The streetlights timed to let you ride through 35 blocks at a time going uptown. In New York City– it is more than the moon that lights your way home.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in The Big Bagel
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